Playdead, DICE and Unity veterans establish new development tech, Coherence

Former DICE, Unity and Playdead developers have come together to form Coherence, a new game development technology that will “enable developers of any size to create online games without traditional limitations […] democratising the creation of online games and enabling teams of any size to produce worlds with virtually infinite scale and possibilities”.

Designed to work with all major game engines, kicking off with Unity, the founders say Coherence will permit developers to make scalable and persistent online games — “allowing them to fully focus on gameplay, rather than network technology”.

The team behind the new venture includes CEO, Dino Patti, co-founder of Limbo developer Playdead and Jumpship, “veteran developer and main creative behind the networking for DICE’s Frostbite engine” CTO Peter Björklund, and Unity co-founder, board member and former CEO, David Helgason.

“Today there are too many challenges in creating real-time interactions in games,” says Coherence CEO Dino Patti. “Is there a way to combine the quality of the single-player experience with the social aspects of multiplayer games? Cumbersome network technology should not limit creativity nor connecting people. Our vision is to level the playing field for the games industry, offering an easy-to-use platform built on a lightning fast core and with a strong focus on being open-source.

Democratising the creation of connected games is an amazing opportunity that I relish taking on. I think that by enabling anyone to do multiplayer at a large scale we are opening the doors to a new wave of connected experiences that we haven’t seen before. I continue to be excited about what we are building at Jumpship, and my dream for Coherence is to one day power multiplayer games that are as emotionally captivating as the well-crafted single player experiences I’ve worked on.”

Coherence is expected to launch in early 2020, with Alpha and Beta phases planned for later this year. For more information, sign up for additional updates at: www.coherence.io.

About Vikki Blake

It took 15 years of civil service monotony for Vikki to crack and switch to writing about games. She has since become an experienced reporter and critic working with a number of specialist and mainstream outlets in both the UK and beyond.